This unprecedented picture of bin Laden as a frustrated family tyrant comes from a self-described al-Qa'eda "black sheep", Abdurahman Khadr.

Abdurahman, 20, the son of a leading Canadian-Egyptian militant, was raised in al-Qa'eda's inner circle. But he fell into disgrace for drinking, smoking and smuggling banned American films into the bin Laden family compound in Jalalabad, where his family lived for several years.

From his new home in Toronto, Abdurahman is now telling all about life with the world's most wanted man.

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He was released from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay late last year. His 17-year-old brother Omar remains at Guantanamo, accused of involvement in the death of a US soldier in Afghanistan. Other members of the Khadr family live in Pakistan, where they remain loyal supporters of bin Laden.

Abdurahman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that bin Laden had "issues with his wife, and he has issues with his kids. You know, the kids aren't listening, the kids aren't doing this and that."

The revelations would be a source of shame for the head of any traditional Arab family. They are an astonishing humiliation for a man supposed to be the "sheikh" and inspiration of a new world order, based on strict Islamic law.

Bin Laden imposed endless restrictions on his family, especially his three wives and their daughters, trying to keep them from growing spoilt in case they needed to flee for a mountain hideout at short notice.

Abdurahman's sister Zaynab, 23, interviewed by CBC in Pakistan, recalled: "He didn't allow them to drink cold water because he wanted them to be prepared [if] one day there's no cold water."

She added: "He did not like to buy the American soft drinks, Coke and Pepsi and all that, but his kids sometimes would buy them."

Yet what his children wanted, they often got. "Their father promised them he would get them a horse if they memorised the Koran. So they were anxious to finish memorising it, which shows they were normal children."

Bin Laden liked to play volleyball with his children, and take them shooting. "If he missed his [shot], they'd laugh at him," said Zaynab.

Behind such homely, almost comic details, horrors lurked. Abdurahman's father, killed in a shoot-out with Pakistani police last year, tried to persuade his son to be a suicide bomber on three separate occasions.

The young man described celebrations at an al-Qa'eda guest house in Afghanistan when news broke of huge bomb blasts at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.

"The leader of the guest house went outside and bought juice for everybody, jugs and jugs of juice. People were making jokes that we should do this more often."

Abdurahman told CBC that he worked for the CIA while in Guantanamo and afterwards in Bosnia, where American agents wanted him to infiltrate jihadi recruitment efforts. But he took fright when the agency asked him to go into Iraq with al-Qa'eda volunteers.

His admissions are an acute embarrassment for Canadian liberals, who adopted the Khadr family as a cause celebre when they were accused of terrorist links in the 1990s.

In 1996, the then prime minister, Jean Chretien, intervened with Pakistani authorities to secure the release of Abdurahman's father, Ahmed Said Khadr. Mr Khadr strongly denied being a terrorist, saying he was a charity worker.

"We are an al-Qa'eda family," Abdurahman told CBC this week. "My family in Pakistan will never admit this."